Posted on 10/25/2001 11:02:12 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
A group of Afghan children collect packets of food aid after an U.S. aircraft completed a night time air drop over a refugee camp in Kumkishlyak in Northern Afghanistan, October 25, 2001. Afghanistan's ruling Taliban on Thursday dismissed as U.S. propaganda a Pentagon statement that they intended to poison food dropped by U.S. aircraft or provided by humanitarian groups to Afghan civilians. The Pentagon said on Wendesday that it had received information the Taliban may poison the food supplies to Afghan civilians and blame the United States. REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko
An Afghan girl eats a box of bean salad after U.S. aircraft dropped food aid in a refugee camp in Kumkishlyak in northern Afghanistan, October 25, 2001. Two Afghan girls eat packets of strawberry jam after receiving food aid from U.S. air drops in a refugee camp in Kumkishlyak in Northern Afghanistan, October 25,2001.
If it does "sink in", how will that prevent the permanent state of war?
LOL You need to write a soap opera...LOOK at those kids..they are well cared for ,well nourished..amd not an ugly one in the bunch..these are set up pictures
No, we are a humane people, and as President Bush has stated, we are not at war with the Afghan people. Most of the troublemakers over there are Arabs and Pakistanis anyway. You're right, war isn't pretty. I don't know if we dropped food for the Japanese and the German kids---no, wait a minute! We did drop food for the German kids during the Berlin Airlift-after the war, when the Soviets were causing trouble. It's funny that these same kids who were "the enemy" were worthy of us dropping food and chewing gum just a short time later. A lot of GIs gave food, chocolate and gum to Italian and German kids during the war as well. Should they have watched them go hungry, just because "war is hell"?
You're sort of right about one thing---when you said we were trying to "buy their love". Of course we are--we need to keep these Northern Alliance people happy so that they will help us out. One hand washes the other and all that. That's another part of war, too. Only it's not "buying their love" it's "winning hearts and minds". So what if it's a propaganda campaign? You make it sound like there's something wrong with it.
We fight this like a war,not a Democrat social program
The Pashtuns are probably genetically closer to Caucasians than to Semites, but in any case, the genetic variability within each race is gigantic compared to the genetic variations that define the races. What that means is that, all things considered, a blonde-haired Swede could easily be genetically closer to a given Tasmanian aborigine than to another randomly chosen Swede. We all share the same gene pool.
As for your point that this war is not against Islam, I would disagree a bit. While it's true that in theory Islam is not necessarily violent, that's a bit like saying that communism isn't necessarily expansionist or totalitarian. We don't concern ourselves with theory in the real world, when practice contradicts it.
That doesn't mean that the Muslim people are our enemy; it simply means that we should not overly concern ourselves with avoiding conflict with Muslim philosophy and cultural practices, when they are in violation of basic humanity.
Lessee; clean, big eyes, belly not swollen, probably cute while it was alive. Yup. Looks like a healthy Afghan kid to me!
It all depends how long you want to keep fighting a war. It sound to me like you'd like to bomb the hell out of anything having to do with Afganistan...and then leave. That would leave you with a hungry, shell-shocked people angry at the the United States for ruining their homeland; then when the next billionaire nutcase comes to Kabul we'll start this mess all over again. The Bush strategy is looking to end this with the Taliban. This is not a bleeding heart strategy...it also puts one Afgan faction against another...which will save numerous American lives.
''Food Gift from the People of the United States of America,'' the package read in English, a language the woman did not understand. Above the words, however, were images anyone could comprehend: an American flag and a drawing of a smiling man raising a spoon to his mouth.
The woman opened the bag and pulled out a package of peanut butter and a package of jelly. She tried them. She did not like them. She fed them to her donkey. He liked them.
quoting further
"The product is not cheap: each packet costs roughly $4.25 to produce."
and still further
"''If you would give peanut butter to a severely malnourished child, you are likely to do more harm than good,'' said Lucas Van den Broeck, executive director of the New York-based Action Against Hunger."
You can view the link http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/298/nation/Puzzle_and_profits_in_the_food_drops+.shtml
I am forced to conclude that the airdrops are a bad idea. A useless idea. A pointless idea. We spend $4.25 to help some profiteer make $0.70, and then the food is either fed to the donkey or isn't good for them.
It's worse than a mistake. It's silly.
These people have been taken over by foreigners. They've been at war for decades. The Afghans are NOT the enemy, the Taliban and OBL and his thugs are.
Well as you applaud the US being a prostitute that is the laughing stock of the Islamic world..I will repeat something a political analist said on fox when this started (you may have forgotten but this started when some Pakastani men rammed a plane into the WTC)
Any way he said this war would be far different than the cold war,that the Russians loved their lives more than they loved their philosophy. He observed that the Muslims love their religion more than their lives.
So now the question for us is what do we love more,our lives or our faith?
but it makes us "feel good" (and here you thought only the liberals thought feeling were more imnportant than outcome)
The Taliban controls the food. If we can break that control, we win and the people will no longer need to kowtow to the Taliban to get fed. Plus it is the Christian thing to do.
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